


The Long, Dark (K)night of Carter Hall

by Devilc



Category: DCU, DCU - Comicverse
Genre: Gen, Humor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-03-07
Updated: 2010-03-07
Packaged: 2017-10-07 19:13:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,639
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/68286
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Devilc/pseuds/Devilc
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Some days, it really sucks to be Carter Hall.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Long, Dark (K)night of Carter Hall

**Author's Note:**

> Written during Mini NaNoWriMo 2006.
> 
> My attempt at having fun with how Carter Hall would perceive Bruce Wayne.
> 
> Set pre _Infinite Crisis_.

Carter Hall, renown but eccentric (or infamous, depending on who you talked to) archaeologist, the "real life Indiana Jones" hated events like this.

But it was his own damn fault for agreeing to do a few guest lectures about the history of Egypt and Kahndaq at Gotham University.

The lecture series Carter's presentations were a part of were underwritten with a grant from The Thomas and Martha Wayne Foundation, which possibly explained why Bruce Wayne had chosen to attend all of them, and when the floor opened to Q&amp;A, asked questions which showed that he had been blessed with good looks but not an excess of brains. Nice enough guy, charming in a way, but definitely a himbo.

Wayne came up to the podium to talk to Carter after the last lecture, and the next thing Carter knew, he had been, well, not quite press-ganged, but close enough to it, into attending a gala ball at stately Wayne Manor the next evening.

And because Wayne money had paid for the plane ticket, his nice room at the Gotham Arms, and his lecture fee, Carter reluctantly but dutifully got his hair trimmed, got his nails buffed, and put on the tuxedo the concierge found for him.

At the party he smiled and played nice for about an hour, drank a few glasses of the surprisingly good red the bar was pouring, and then wandered around trying to find a somewhat quiet spot.

He ended up on the terrace overlooking the garden. Quiet enough if you could ignore Wayne drunkenly (and rather ineptly) fumbling with a tipsy brunette in the gazebo.

"Hi." A voice from behind startled him.

A young man Carter _knew _ he had met but couldn't quite place.

Shy smile. "Tim Drake." The youth held out his hand. "Bruce is -- Bruce adopted me."

"Oh, yes, I remember now." He held out his hand, "Carter Hall. Pleased to meet you again."

"I really enjoyed your lectures. The one about the history of Kahndaq and the discovery of Shiruta's tomb and how Black Adam has reburied it was really quite fascinating. I thought you made some really good points about the ethical difficulties facing archaeologists and the realities of balancing the quest for knowledge with the need to be sensitive."

Heh. If only Tim knew what that confrontation had really been like. "Thank you. Teth Adam was understandably dismayed by what he viewed as desecration and grave robbing. He deeply loved his wife and though it's been a few thousand years since she died, he still remembers it quite vividly."

"Still -- it would have been nice if he had allowed a few photos, or some more surveys, or if he would even sit down with scholars and answer a few questions about what the burial chamber and monuments had looked like."

Carter swirled the wine in his glass for a few moments before replying, "He's a ... complex person. And, given that he wields Superman level powers, it's really not a good idea to press the issue when he's upset."

Tim nodded thoughtfully then said, "I was reading that your museum, the Stonechat, has a very large collection of antique arms and armor."

"Yes." Carter smiled. Tracking down the various accouterments of three thousand years of past lives, many of them spent as a warrior, did tend to make for a large collection of weapons. "The cultures of the ancient Nile region may be my specialty, but arms and armor are my hobby."

"There's a really nice suit of armor and some shields and swords on the second floor. Would you like to see?"

There was a certain earnestness to the youth, and he seemed like such a polite and intelligent young man that Carter decided "Oh, why not?", besides, doubtless he would be able to tell Tim something substantial about the arms and armor, unlike his -- unlike Wayne, who probably viewed them as little more than décor he had inherited. Also, it would get Carter further away from the bumbling going on in the gazebo, because, really, it took a great deal of restraint to not go over there, pull Wayne aside, and tell him that saying to a woman that she had "lovely hooters" and asking how much they cost pretty much guaranteed that you would not be getting laid anytime soon.

"Yes, thank you very much, Tim. I would certainly like to see them."

~oo(0)oo~

The two of them wandered down the gallery hall, Carter talking to Tim, who, except for his black hair and blue eyes, seemed to be the opposite of Wayne in just about every possible way.

He had just finished explaining to Tim the ways in which that suit of plate and mail, dating from around the year 1375, had allowed for greater freedom of movement than mail alone, when he saw the sword --

\-- and the memories came crashing back in. The hours spent in his father's forge, laboring over that blade, a broadsword.

His name was Koenrad VonGrimm -- 

>   
> _and this was going to be his master's piece. He had had a dream in which he took and stacked several different rods of steel and forge welded them, and twisted them, pounded the resulting bar square, and then twisted it with another bar made the same way -- _ Carter's knees sagged a little in shock as he pulled himself back into the present day. Today he knew all about the theory and techniques of pattern welding, remembered all of his past lives, but Koenrad VonGrimm knew none of that, would not have realized that his dream was a fragment of knowledge from a past life spent as Brian of Kent trying to break through _ \-- and fired it with charcoal. He had taken the dream as a sign, an omen, and was determined to follow it as closely as possible, despite the objections of his father. Finding enough charcoal would be the hardest part, it was expensive these days. But somehow he felt that coal would not work right -- _
> 
> \-- The powerfully built outlander knight with the fierce blue eyes and the bat as his coat of arms stood before him and through gestures and a bit of broken lowlands German indicated that he liked the sword whose blade had chevron patterns in the metal. And because it was Koenrad's master's piece, and because it had taken a lot of blood, sweat, and tears to create, and because that beautiful pattern in the metal made it unique, Koenrad knew he would charge a premium for it --
> 
> \-- though he knew it was foolish, Koenrad couldn't stop jiggling the purse, enjoying the heft of it, the clink of the coins. With this kind of money he could purchase his own forge, establish himself, find a good wife -- 

"Are you okay, Mr. Hall?"

"I-I ... what do you know about this sword, Tim?"

Tim shrugged. "Bruce said it belonged to David Wayne. He lived in the late 1400s."

Carter took a deep breath. "Do you know if he traveled to Germany?" Well, actually, _he _ knew that David Wayne had traveled to Germany, but he couldn't exactly share _how_ he happened to know that bit of information.

"No," Tim shrugged. "Why?"

"Look here," Carter pointed "it bears the maker's mark of Koenrad VonGrimm, who lived and worked in Lubeck during the same time period. The blade is also pattern welded, which is a technique that died out in Continental Europe around the year 1300, due to the scarcity of wood for charcoal and the emergence of a different technique for smelting iron. The technique did survive in Scandinavia, however. Because Lubeck's in the north of Germany, close to the Danish border, it makes me wonder if VonGrimm had contact with somebody familiar with Scandinavian techniques, or if this was something he rediscovered on his own."

"Wow. How do you know so much about him?"

"The Stonechat has several pieces of VonGrimm's. You might say that I'm a fan of his work." Pause. "Do you think there's any chance Mr. Wayne might sell this?"

Tim laughed. "No. He's actually kind of fond of it. A couple of times he's actually taken it off the wall and swung it around. Last time, though --" and here Tim could no longer contain his laughter "He was trying to impress this lady friend of his, Selena Kyle, and he misjudged the distance and sliced this big bow off her dress. It was Versace. She was wicked pissed."

"She's lucky to be alive," Carter said darkly. "It's a weapon, not a toy." Inwardly he groaned. His beautiful blade, his masterpiece, in the possession of a useless playboy shitwit like Bruce Wayne! The man just didn't deserve to have it, didn't have the intellectual capacity to really appreciate this one-of-a-kind, priceless marriage of form and function hanging on his walls.

"What do you know about this battle axe?" Tim's voice pulled him back to the present.

Oh well, at least it would end up in the hands of somebody with a brain some day. Somebody who would probably understand the importance of lending it to historians so they could make a proper study of it.

Hell, if he got lucky, Bruce Wayne might break his neck this winter skiing in St. Moritz -- he was always getting into accidents, those gossip rags Kendra read always had something to say about that -- and if Carter played his hand right with Tim, it could even end up back in his arsenal, being put to good use the next time he saved the world with the JSA, or maybe even the JLA -- he was still a reservist with them.

Shaking his head slightly, drawing a deep breath, he turned his attention to the next piece and began telling Tim about the form and function of the "bearded" axe on the wall.


End file.
